Re: Looking for good Ada95 book

[ok@goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au (Richard A. O'Keefe)]

mfb@mbunix.mitre.org (Michael F Brenner) writes:

>I was not asked what my opinion was before forming this imaginary
>consensus

Actually, you were.  You just weren't listening.
There's no smiley on this, because it is literally true.
The old AQ&S guidelines invited comment.  Comments were also invited
for the Ada 9x revisions (which turned out to be Ada 95).  There was
quite a long time when people could have written in comments about
style.

>and I feel that we should reject all nonsense standards
>such as capitalization 

and then goes on to propose a standard for capitalisation

>that take time away from making a program
>semantically correct (solving the problem correctly) and making
>it efficient.

But you have this backwards.  _Following_ a capitalisation convention
*saves* time, because it eliminates unimportant decisions.

>If a standard is going to become a consensus, it 
>should capitalize like almost all languages on Earth that have
>capitals do: only acronyms and the first letter of each computer
>program are capitals, all others are small letters.

The first letter of each computer program?

I merely note that English and German have *different* capitalisation
rules, and pass on to the next point.

>But most 
>importantly, do not make standards without the consent of the 
>victims who will be subjected to the tyrrany of those standards. 
>If I am not permitted input into the process, then the process
>Must not be construed to effect me.

You can with good reason level this charge at Microsoft, whose weird
convention you _have_ to follow when using their C API.  But you cannot
level it at Ada, where there _was_ an opportunity for the general public
to provide input.  I read a lot of the documents, decided the people
working on them knew what they were doing, and waited impatiently for
the result.  I had paper stacked about a metre feet high with this stuff.

Did you notice, by the way, that if your claim about standards were
extended to national laws, you would feel yourself free to ignore almost
every law in the USA, certainly the Consistution would not bind you, and
you would not feel obliged to obey the laws of _this_ country (Australia)
and would merrily drive down the wrong side of the street.

I wish more people would stop screaming about the "THEY are infringing on
MY rights" side of things (in programming; screaming about rights is often
a good idea in politics) and think about the courtesy they owe to other
people who have to deal with their code.  The _real_ victims are the
people who have to maintain code written by someone who insisted on his
rights.  The whole point of Ada, after all, is to reduce costs over the
_whole_ lifecycle, including maintenance.


For what it's worth, I agree that a layout style should be based on
natural language, and the Ada Quality & Style Guidelines explicitly
mention that point.

Pursuing the reductio ad absurdum a bit further, nobody asked *me* what
the grammar, spelling, or vocabulary of English should be.  I suppose I
have a _right_ to "any reo I want patter", but I have no right to expect
other people to like it, or to hire me.  (I wonder how many people reading
this group understand the old English comedy line "How bona to vada your
dolly old eek" or the following sentence which most New Zealanders would
have understood before the impact of American TV:  "I need some kai in my
puku.")

-- 
Mixed Member Proportional---a *great* way to vote!
Richard A. O'Keefe; http://www.cs.rmit.edu.au/%7Eok; RMIT Comp.Sci.